Markets and Their Effects

[Estebonrober]

Okay, so leaving out the word better...got ANY option?

Internal distribution within a company, a family, a group of friends...terrific...but the source of the goods being distributed there is an external market, so it still hasn't been eliminated from the process.

Can you point to a scarce good, now or ever, that is or was distributed through a process that did not involve markets?

Fair warning...I can, but NO ONE is going to like the marketless alternative.

what ?

 

[IglooDame]

Okay, so leaving out the word better...got ANY option?

Internal distribution within a company, a family, a group of friends...terrific...but the source of the goods being distributed there is an external market, so it still hasn't been eliminated from the process.

Can you point to a scarce good, now or ever, that is or was distributed through a process that did not involve markets?

Fair warning...I can, but NO ONE is going to like the marketless alternative.

Human organs intended for transplant.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure. In ancient Sumer and other Bronze Age civilizations such as Crete, grains were distributed on the basis of a fixed amount per worker per day by the Temple or Palace authorities. I am not offering an opinion on whether such a system is "better" than markets, but it is pretty indisputable that such systems existed in history and, in more limited form, continue to exist today.

Per worker? That's a market where labor is traded for grain. If it were per person it might be a "market free" system. Try again.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Human organs intended for transplant.

Are available to the highest bidder on the black market, despite all rules and efforts. A scarce commodity creates markets, whether we like it or not.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Exchange can take many forms other than "trade", and the difference is simple enough: in a market, prices are set by supply and demand. Most forms of exchange throughout recorded history (note I am intentionally leaving prehistory out of the bargain!) have not, strictly speaking, involved markets because prices - equivalencies between one type of good and another - have more often been set by things like royal decree or sacred custom rather than through the interaction of supply and demand.

But see, the only reason you assume there "must have been some quid pro quo involved" is because the field of economics has largely constructed the history of markets by looking at modern society, which is permeated by markets, and projecting it backwards in time rather than through more empirical methods. If you care to look you can find plenty of examples of exchange being carried on in terms that really cannot be described in terms of simple "quid pro quo" by stateless cultures. In the absence of the coercive apparatus required to create true markets, exchange tends to be mediated by ritual and its form determined by the nature of the social relationships of those engaged in it. People engaging in exchange for pure material advantage with little or no consideration of other factors is quite rare, historically speaking, and only in the past 150 years or so has it become an important way for people to actually obtain the necessities of life.

I'm not going to engage with the word "better" right now. Modern society is full of institutions that do not use markets to distribute scarce resources. For example, any company that exists today distributes resources internally based on a system more closely resembling communism (to each according to need, from each according to ability - people contribute according to their skills, and receive what they need to do their jobs) than markets. The way families distribute resources patently has nothing to do with markets. People who treat their friends only as potential profit opportunities are known as "sociopaths". And so on.

It may be simply be evidence of nomadism, or plunder in the course of warfare. There is no way to know.

Even if we assume this is the case, exchange doesn't necessarily mean trade. The fact that you apparently cannot imagine exchange that is not trade is not my problem. Of course, the next time your wife or children ask you for help with something and you don't demand payment you have experienced exchange that is not trade, so you actually do not need to use your imagination for this.

If you are going to boil all this down to semantics, then you better define all your terms up front. Trading sheep for wine is a market. Trading labor for grain is a market. Sending bitumen from Uruk to Egypt is trade. Sumerians decorating themselves with lapis jewelry from Afghanistan is trade. Farmers bringing fruit into a city square to "sell" or trade is a market (Oh wait, I think such a place has a name....) You are letting your ideology get in the way of the facts.

Neolithic Clay Tokens
Neolithic clay tokens were made very simply. A small piece of clay was worked into one of about a dozen different shapes, and then perhaps incised with lines or dots or embellished with pellets of clay. These were then sun-dried or baked in a hearth. The tokens ranged in size from 1–3 centimeters (about 1/3 to one inch), and about 8,000 of them dated between 7500–3000 BCE have been found so far.

The earliest shapes were simple cones, spheres, cylinders, ovoids, disks, and tetrahedrons (pyramids). The premier researcher of clay tokens Denise Schmandt-Besserat argues that these shapes are representations of cups, baskets, and granaries. The cones, spheres and flat disks, she said, represented small, medium and large measures of grain; ovoids were jars of oil; cylinders a sheep or goat; pyramids a person-day of work. She based her interpretations on similarities of the forms to shapes used in the later Mesopotamian written proto-cuneiform language and, while that theory has yet to be confirmed, she may very well be right.

What Were Tokens For?
Scholars believe that clay tokens were used to express numerical quantities of goods. They occur in two sizes (larger and smaller), a difference that may have been used as a means of counting and manipulating quantities. The Mesopotamians, who had a base 60 numbering system, also bundled their numerical notations, so that a group of three, six, or ten signs equated to one sign of a different size or shape.

Possible uses for the tokens are associated with accounting and include trade negotiations between parties, tax collection or assessments by state agencies, inventories, and allotments or disbursements as payment for services rendered.
Tokens were not tied to a particular language. No matter what language you spoke, if both parties understood that a cone meant a measure of grain, the transaction could take place. Whatever they were used for, the same dozen or so token shapes were used for some 4,000 years throughout the Near East.

https://www.thoughtco.com/clay-tokens-mesopotamian-writing-171673[/QUOTE]

 

[Timsup2nothin]

what ?

Land transitioned from being an abundant good that "belonged to" whoever was standing on it or at least growing something on it to being a scarce good when it was all claimed under the divine right of kings. Said kings then distributed it however they saw fit, generally operating under the premise of "might makes right," for as long as the feudal economic system held up. Scarce good, no market involved.

 

[Estebonrober]

Well I guess @Lexicus point about liberal adherence to the universality of markets has been well demonstrated. lol

I'm still trying to figure out what the market return I'm getting on feeding my family or donating goods to charities?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well I guess @Lexicus point about liberal adherence to the universality of markets has been well demonstrated. lol

I'm still trying to figure out what the market return I'm getting on feeding my family or donating goods to charities?

Where do you get the food? Or the goods? I'm not using a market when I'm distributing food into dog bowls either, but the dog food bin isn't filling by osmosis...the food comes in bags that are bought through a market process.

What seems to have been demonstrated is that neither you nor Lexicus can come up with any scarce good that is distributed through market free processes.

 

[Samson]

If you are going to boil all this down to semantics, then you better define all your terms up front. Trading sheep for wine is a market. Trading labor for grain is a market. Sending bitumen from Uruk to Egypt is trade. Sumerians decorating themselves with lapis jewelry from Afghanistan is trade. Farmers bringing fruit into a city square to "sell" or trade is a market (Oh wait, I think such a place has a name....) You are letting your ideology get in the way of the facts.

https://www.thoughtco.com/clay-tokens-mesopotamian-writing-171673

The King saying "everyone works, everyone gets grain" is not a market. Travelling from Afghanistan to Sumeria, with lapis lazuli for a wedding to seal an alliance in not a market. Bringing fruit to the city because the priests tell you that is how you go to heaven is not a market. The King saying "10% of everything you grow is mine" is not a market.

Lex has a very good point. We do not know how these things worked.

 

[Estebonrober]

Land transitioned from being an abundant good that "belonged to" whoever was standing on it or at least growing something on it to being a scarce good when it was all claimed under the divine right of kings. Said kings then distributed it however they saw fit, generally operating under the premise of "might makes right," for as long as the feudal economic system held up. Scarce good, no market involved.

I mean all "markets" have done is change who the kings are in this context? Distributed how they saw fit usually meant whom they considered worthy of having it in terms of securing that might. It seems to me that we've stretched the meaning of markets far enough to incorporate this as well actually in this back and forth. Meaning the King was still making generally "market" based decisions when ruling by fiat. Of course with the definition stretched this far society itself could be making "market" based decisions in a full communist model as well, its just chosen to value things differently then this lousy Late Capitalism model we have now.

 

[Estebonrober]

Where do you get the food? Or the goods? I'm not using a market when I'm distributing food into dog bowls either, but the dog food bin isn't filling by osmosis...the food comes in bags that are bought through a market process.

What seems to have been demonstrated is that neither you nor Lexicus can come up with any scarce good that is distributed through market free processes.

Yea this is my point, at this point you've stretched your meaning of market so far is inevitably includes everything. Even how I treat my own body for example. It says nothing about the nature of Late Capitalistic markets and it make @Lexicus point about liberal adherence to market driven dogma.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well I guess @Lexicus point about liberal adherence to the universality of markets has been well demonstrated. lol

I'm still trying to figure out what the market return I'm getting on feeding my family or donating goods to charities?

If you define your family as the market, the return to you is likely to be more happiness or some other not so tangible thing.

 

[Estebonrober]

Where do you get the food? Or the goods? I'm not using a market when I'm distributing food into dog bowls either, but the dog food bin isn't filling by osmosis...the food comes in bags that are bought through a market process.

What seems to have been demonstrated is that neither you nor Lexicus can come up with any scarce good that is distributed through market free processes.

I have scarce source of food and shelter and I distribute it to my family freely, no market involved.

 

[Samson]

If you define your family as the market, the return to you is likely to be more happiness or some other not so tangible thing.

But that is not why you do it, right?

 

[Estebonrober]

If you define your family as the market, the return to you is likely to be more happiness or some other not so tangible thing.

Yea this is my point, now you've turned the term "markets" into a philosophical outlook on life (which makes @Lexicus point) and completely bastardized normal relationships into some sick utilitarianistic capitalism.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yea this is my point, at this point you've stretched your meaning of market so far is inevitably includes everything. Even how I treat my own body for example. It says nothing about the nature of Late Capitalistic markets and it make @Lexicus point about liberal adherence to market driven dogma.

Actually the difference isn't in "stretching" the meaning of markets, it is in an incredibly obvious and basically ridiculous narrowing of what is meant by distribution. If I take you out to lunch and buy us a couple hot dogs, me splitting said hot dogs between us doesn't make hot dogs "distributed without markets" just because you didn't pay for your own.

 

[Lexicus]

Per worker? That's a market where labor is traded for grain. If it were per person it might be a "market free" system. Try again.

Well, sure, if you define every system where resources are distributed as a market then markets are the only option. If "markets" are not empirically distinguishable from any other system of distributing resources then there is little point to this discussion, and you have in fact proved my point about liberals.

A scarce commodity creates markets, whether we like it or not.

Well, since "commodity" means "a good produced for sale on the market" this is true by definition, but it doesn't say anything useful.

If you are going to boil all this down to semantics, then you better define all your terms up front. Trading sheep for wine is a market. Trading labor for grain is a market. Sending bitumen from Uruk to Egypt is trade. Sumerians decorating themselves with lapis jewelry from Afghanistan is trade. Farmers bringing fruit into a city square to "sell" or trade is a market (Oh wait, I think such a place has a name....) You are letting your ideology get in the way of the facts.

You are projecting harder than Donald Trump. You are the one who is implicitly claiming that no exchange other than trade exists because your market fundamentalist ideology demands that be true.

If you define your family as the market, the return to you is likely to be more happiness or some other not so tangible thing.

This is exactly what I'm saying (and thank you @Estebonrober for getting it). When you get to the point where you say, "well everything can be conceptualized as a market," a "market" is no longer an empirical phenomenon, it's more like an epistemological construct, a lens through which you view the world and everything in it. Which, you know, is fine if that's what you want to do but please stop telling me we need to let people live on the streets and die from being unable to afford healthcare because of your philosophical predilections.

Actually the difference isn't in "stretching" the meaning of markets, it is in an incredibly obvious and basically ridiculous narrowing of what is meant by distribution. If I take you out to lunch and buy us a couple hot dogs, me splitting said hot dogs between us doesn't make hot dogs "distributed without markets" just because you didn't pay for your own.

This is a completely valid point when you're talking about capitalist society. Virtually everything that is produced today is produced for sale on the market, and it has to go through the market before getting to the friends, the family, or the company or whatever. But that is a peculiarity of our historical age, living in a system dominated by markets.

 

[Estebonrober]

Actually the difference isn't in "stretching" the meaning of markets, it is in an incredibly obvious and basically ridiculous narrowing of what is meant by distribution. If I take you out to lunch and buy us a couple hot dogs, me splitting said hot dogs between us doesn't make them "distributed without markets" just because you didn't pay for your own.

Yes this again just proves his point right? You literally cannot fathom a world without markets (gravity comment) because you are so ideologically tied to the idea of equivalent exchange for everything in life. Its not something you can just break someone of, this is as deep as religious belief imo. Its interesting, but I'm not sure worthy of much actual discussion.

 

[Samson]

Actually the difference isn't in "stretching" the meaning of markets, it is in an incredibly obvious and basically ridiculous narrowing of what is meant by distribution. If I take you out to lunch and buy us a couple hot dogs, me splitting said hot dogs between us doesn't make hot dogs "distributed without markets" just because you didn't pay for your own.

So with the NHS, where the state buys labour and equipment on the market and distributes health care "free at the point of delivery" "distributed without markets"?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, since "commodity" means "a good produced for sale on the market" this is true by definition, but it doesn't say anything useful.

So change it to "any scarce good." That was a lazy bit of theatrics that I really wish was beneath you.

Well, sure, if you define every system where resources are distributed as a market then markets are the only option.

That's not MY definition there in your erroneously presented example. "Workers" got grain. Those who did not work did not. If that isn't a market where labor is traded for grain just what the ____ do you want to call it? Go ahead, make up some definition so long as you get to "win." But you're gonna look stupid.